Ksenija, this one is for you! I love you.
There come days when we need to face our pain. It comes out one way or another, the more we try to avoid it, the more it presses us. Often it is old pain: stored, buried, repressed – the one we were afraid to feel.
There come days when we need to face our pain.
This above mentioned facing has happened to me these days. Our body knows one tense only: the present. This seems to be the case for our subconsciousness, too. What we carry is always happening to us now and not 10 years ago, 6 months ago etc.
Do you remember the days when it was hard to get out of bed in the morning? Days when we would wake up with heavy weight in the chest pulling us down, when we wouldn’t find motivation to start a new day, when we couldn’t believe that something so awful could have happened to us. Days when everything left was just pain, sadness, sadness, sadness, fear, apathy, anxiety…Feeling of not being whole, of being torn, big part of us missing. Perhaps it was because the loved one left, or someone died, or we lost something dear to us. It is not easy to let go, completely let go, of the past. We hold on to something because it was so unique, so beautiful, loving – that we don’t want to lose it.
I’ve been doing this – not completely consciously, more unknowingly. But life teaches us all the time. These days pain sprang out of me so that I could see or better to say begin to see: if we let go, we do not lose all the beautiful things we had in the past. We only lose the burden of it, the “chain” linking us to past taking away our energy. Easier said than done!!
I was avoiding this lesson, avoiding thinking about past and also avoiding letting go of it! This triggered a set of “coincidences” that unleashed themselves onto me like an avalanche. Game of associations began: I saw someone, I heard a song on the radio, all kinds of little things kept reminding me of certain stuff until bam “the fuse blew” and I started crying. I cried and cried and then I looked at myself and the situation without trying to euphemize.
Yesterday evening images flooded me. They would linger in my head for hours and hours until I admitted: “Ok ok, I got the message!” Images were speaking in language of symbols, scenery set in Venice. Flowers represent mortality, the fleeting nature of this world around us. White stone represents something more permanent, solid.
Once there was Death in Venice.
Balcony above the Grand Canal, all made of white stone: neatly carved fence, floor, small table and bright white blinding sunlight. So much light… Red roses forgotten on the balcony. Sun shines into white stone slowly warming it. Roses are drying up slowly. Then laughter bounces off from the roses. Laughter coming from the canal below. It was once my laughter. Nothing more can be done. They were left there. Damn, they were left there!!!
I am observing the balcony from the room behind it. I am observing through glass wall, heartbroken, sitting on the floor curled up hugging my knees. I am watching the roses immobile, watching and watching. I will not touch them and I will not move them! It happened and the end of it! I am caught in the immobility. Red petals become small drops of blood. They become pure unstained pain – all that once was.
I step on the balcony into the sunlight. I lie down on the bench, wearing white dress next to the white table. Sleeping Beauty fairy tale sleep. I will sleep for 1000 years, I do not wish to wake up. Time has stopped itself. Stopped completely. Venice is caught in the stopped moment. Who will find the way out? White doves are sleeping.
Then the moment of truth. I am now observing myself sleeping – hibernation, desired escape. And I know: if I step to the drying roses and take them into my hands, they will revive and bloom again at my will. Old resistance inside me, child in me saying: “No no, I cannot revive them! I will just sleep there, cannot do anything!” and something much stronger rising inside me, revealing the responsibility that lies behind the fact that I am able to revive the roses.
Inner conflicts: who doesn’t know them? Who has never felt torn inside, divided?
It is good to let ourselves feel the pain – to feel it in all its might and then look at it. To release it, forgive and (the hardest part?) accept responsibility that comes with recognition: “We are capable of self-renewal!” We bear the ability of “reviving roses” inside us. Paradoxically: seeing our ability of renewal can be terrifying! Sometimes I wonder what scares us more: fear of being hurt or accepting the fact that we can “renew” ourselves? Because once that we know: “My touch revives the roses!” we don’t have any more excuses for our suffering.
Photo:
http://drawsketch.about.com/od/flowerdrawing/ss/drawarose.htm